Marxists Internet Archive Publications

New Books for Sale from the M.I.A.

José Carlos Mariátegui. History of the World
Crisis, and Other Writings, includes the record of 17 lectures on the
post-WW I world crisis, supplemented with writings on imperialism, feminism,
socialism, and the rise of fascsim in Germany and Italy. Texts selected, edited, and translated by Juan Fajardo,
212 pp

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party and its genesis, includes all the prefaces published during Marx & Engels' life times, "The Principles of Communism" "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" and the "Third Address of the International Workingmen's Association, The Paris Commune," May 1871. 116 pp

Classics in Activity Theory

Marxists Internet Archive Publications has published the first three volumes of classics in Activity Theory, reprints of English translations first published by Progress Publishers in the 1970s, of the second generation of Soviet followers of Lev Vygotsky. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, while remaining in the public domain, these works have become unavailable, in most cases even on the second hand market. And yet there is vast research community across the world which builds on Vygotsky and Activity theory, particularly in education departments.

Each of the three books beginning the series is a collection of the English translations from one of the three authors: Alexei Leontyev, Alexander Meshcheryakov and Evald Ilyenkov, plus a short preface by Prof. Mike Cole of the University of California, San Diego. Every university or education faculty library should have this series.

Titles included are, from Leontyev, The Development of Mind: The Problem of the Origin of Sensation, The Biological and Social in Man’s Psyche, An Outline of the Evolution of the Psyche, The Historical Approach to Study of the Human Psyche, The Development of Higher Forms of Memory, The Psychological Principles of Preschool Play, The Theory of the Development of the Child’s Psyche, Child Development and the Problem of Mental Deficiency, Activity and Consciousness; from Ilyenkov, The Ideal in Human Activity: Dialectical Logic, Descartes & Leibniz – The Subject Matter of Logic, Spinoza – Thought as an Attribute of Substance, Kant – Logic and Dialectics, Fichte & Schelling – Dualism or Monism, Hegel – Dialectics as Logic, Feuerbach – Idealism or Materialism?, A Critique of Objective Idealism, Thought as the Subject Matter of Logic, Dialectics and the Theory of Knowledge, Contradiction as a Category of Dialectical Logic, The Problem of the General in Dialectics, Activity and Knowledge, The Universal, The Concept of the Ideal, Reflections on Lenin’s book: “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” and Meshcheryakov, Awakening To Life: Deaf-blind Children, Problems of Deaf-blindness, Forming Behaviour and Developing Their Minds, Learning Programmes for the Deaf-blind.

Together with these Soviet era classics we offer Hegel’s Logic, with a Foreword by Andy Blunden, which introduces Hegel from the point of view of a contemporary Activity Theorist, together with the most influential of Hegel’s texts.

The Development of Mind: by A. N. Leont'ev 414 pp
a reproduction of the Progress Publishers 1981 edition, plus “Activity and Consciousness,” published by Progress Pubishers in 1977.

Awakening To Life: on the education of deaf-blind children in the Soviet Union, by Alexander Meshcheryakov. This work documents pioneering work of the Vygotsky School, which provided a philosophical foundation for a psychology based on collaboration. 255 pp